Batwing
27 years ago - Luke Fox is born the son of Lucius Fox.
20 years ago - 7-year-old Luke's sister Tamara is born.
16 years ago - 11-year-old Luke begins to practice boxing.
13 years ago - 14-year-old Luke becomes a high school wrestler.
12 years ago - 15-year-old Luke stands up for Dick Grayson in high school.
10 years ago - 17-year-old Luke starts competing in Tae Kwon Do Point Sparring.
9 years ago - 18-year-old Luke attends MIT, and begins secretly competing in amateur MMA.
7 years ago - 20-year-old Luke leaves MIT, working on his own tech startup, despite the disapproval of his father Lucius Fox. They stop speaking.
5 years ago - 22-year-old Luke begins competing in professional MMA.
3 years ago - 24-year-old Luke moves his tech startup back to Gotham as they rebuild after their earthquake, moving into the new Goth-Corp Mega-Towers. He speaks to his father Lucius Fox for the first time in years, but they still can't find common ground.
Now - 27-year-old Luke's tech firm is hostilely taken over by Goth-Corp. His technology is used to adapt the Mega Towers surviellance systems, and when trying to reclaim his technology he is arrested by Goth-Corp security. His father Lucius Fox reaches out to him, and they discover their mutual need to undo Goth-Corps growing stranglehold on the tech of Neo-Gotham. Lucius equips Luke with the Batwing armor. He begins fighting the security systems of Neo-Gotham and protecting Gotham in Bruce Wayne's absence. He works with Dick Grayson, who grants him access to the Bat-Family's com network.
For a long time, we've had this concept in the back of our minds of something we could do with the modern Gotham. At first glance, it felt like quite a departure, but the more we turned it over and thought about it, the more it felt like something that was already being set up within the world of the comics and something that not only fit into our story but actually substantially evolved it.
It all revolves around the implementation of a slightly reimagined version of the character Batwing, who would evolve from a tertiary supporting character in the world of Batman to have a much more significant role. We are getting pretty experimental on a large canvas here, and while I'm confident in what we've done, I am really, really eager to see what you think of it!
It all revolves around the implementation of a slightly reimagined version of the character Batwing, who would evolve from a tertiary supporting character in the world of Batman to have a much more significant role. We are getting pretty experimental on a large canvas here, and while I'm confident in what we've done, I am really, really eager to see what you think of it!
Batwing's Comic HistoryThe origin of the character Batwing is probably the most interesting part of the original character's history. During Grant Morrison's run on the Batman books from 2006-2011, they set out to make every version of Batman that had ever appeared canon in one way or another. This included the invention of the character David Zavimbe, the African character Batwing, who was a reference to "The Batman Nobody Knows", a backup story by Frank Robbins from 1973's Batman #250 when Bruce took some kids camping and they each described their version of Batman.
The New 52 was rolled out shortly after Morrison's version of Batwing was introduced, and the character was given their own series as one of the launch titles, despite having very few appearances before this point. Judd Winick wrote the introductory story arcs and created a really interesting character with their own compelling story completely peripheral to the world of Batman... a character we've adapted elsewhere in our project. The first few years of the New 52 were a volatile time, with a lot of launch titles canceled. While the Batwing book continued, David Zavimbe was actually written out of the series, and replaced by a new character, Luke Fox, whose introduction was abrupt at best. |
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Luke was the heretofore unknown son of long-time Batman supporting cast member Lucius Fox, a young man who had just graduated MIT with an engineering degree, competed in MMA despite his father's protests, and was just rebellious enough to have vague protagonist energy as he stepped into the role of Batwing using updated armor. The fact that the series replaced one black character with another despite having very little connection with each other doesn't speak super well for the editorial intentions at play, but at least the differences between the two characters illustrate what they were going for. While David had a really interesting story all his own, he was pretty far removed from the world of Batman and Gotham. By contrast, Luke didn't have much of a story of his own at all, but he lived and worked in Gotham and had ties to existing parts of the mythology. In the end, I imagine it just made it easier to justify publishing the book.
While I'm sure my bias here is coming across, the fact is, Luke has gone on to be a pretty successful character. He only carried the series for another 14 issues but has actually gone on to make way more appearances than David's version of Batwing. He appeared in the animated movie Batman: Bad Blood and then was a series regular on the Arrowverse Batwoman series as Kate's tech person before getting a suit of his own. |
Our Batwing StoryIf you're a long-time follower of this site, I'm sure you can tell that this is the sort of character we would usually not include. As he's used in the comic canon he's not really telling his own story or contributing to the larger DC mythology in a meaningful way, but we did find what we believe is an interesting story that WE can tell with him, and we believe it makes Luke way more than just a fun addition.
There have pretty consistently been suggestions that the future of Gotham is going to feature the city's evolution into a large cyberpunk-esque techno-cityscape. Batman Beyond, of course, but also in the pages of DC's Future State (where another son of Lucius Fox, Jace Fox, becomes the future Batman), and even in the modern continuity during the run of James Tynion IV. There's a certain inevitability to the idea, and it occurred to us that if Gotham is going to start rebuilding itself into this futuristic shape, the most logical time for that to happen is actually right after the No Man's Land earthquake. Certain unscrupulous mega-corporations (we went with Goth-Corp, the company responsible for Mister Freeze) could have bid to rebuild whole decimated blocks as massive Mega-Towers, creating a district of Gotham that they would rebrand as Neo-Gotham. Since the No Man's Land earthquakes happened three years ago, they would all be coming to completion... right now. |
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This might seem strange to some readers, but personally, I immediately like the idea of manifesting that sort of cyberscape TODAY. So much of the technology that defines that sort of sci-fi world is actually fully available right now, and it can be so interesting to see a modern-day version of those stories.
So how, then, does this relate to Luke and to Batwing? In our story, Bruce has gone missing and is presumed dead by a lot of people. Goth-Corp has started to crack down on the security of Neo-Gotham, making it more and more of a corporate security state. It's a very interesting time for Luke (with his father's help), to step into the role of protector of Neo-Gotham specifically, but also for Gotham at large. I hope the result is clear here; Luke Fox as Batwing has become a version of Terry McGinnis from Batman Beyond. Their armor and equipment operate much the same way, they work in similar versions of Gotham, and they both have an elder father figure supporting them. We really think this is a phenomenal evolution of the world of Gotham and a great way for all the members of the Bat Family to move forward. I would really, really love to hear what you think about this spin on these characters. |